James Russell Lowell On Pollen

Quote for the Week

Keeping a car clean in spring, a season depicted by the yellow haze covering most inanimate objects, is difficult to impossible. Take my black car which now, despite a recent trip to the car wash, sports a dull, dusty yellow countenance.

Ah, tree pollen, that fine powder that coats driveways, cars, lawn furniture, and people if they stand still too long outdoors.

James Russell Lowell, a 19th century American poet, likened books to pollen-carrying bees. He wrote: "Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind."

Sounds lovely, doesn't it? I'll try to keep that literary scenario in mind the next time I'm outside sneezing and sniffling because of all that darn quickening pollen.

Takeaway Truth

You can run, but you can't hide. Pollen will get you despite all the Flonase and Allegra in your antihistamine armory.